Brian Moylan

Seed, the AOL News Borg that generates story ideas based on the things that people are looking for on search engines, is up and running. We've had a look at their assignments and there is only one appropriate response: poetry.

Seed is trying to recruit a cyborg army of underpaid freelancers who will write their content for them and will pay them anywhere from $25 to $7 trillion based on the difficulty of the assignment and the amount of traffic it gets. We are now all soulless creatures plugged into the Seed matrix and paid only in the life-sustaining fluid that keeps us alive and Seed is like those metal cockroach things running around feeding off our energy.

To extend this Matrix metaphor further, we are going to be the Neo trying to jack this entire system. Instead of quickly churning out content for this soul-crushing enterprise, we are going to feed it with poems. Hopefully it will find all this creativity to be poison and it will die from the inside out.

A sesame-seed bun looks like a million lights
left on in Ewok village, plump and starchy
its dome echos over the green canopy of
lettuce peeking out of its peek. Tomato
shows its pudgy nose, a slip of taunting red
like Wilde's boutineer, drawing
you in and laughing you away at the same time.
The fruit slices moisture wicks into the dry
bread above it and its seeds rummage
in their embryonic fluid on a leafy bed.

Slowly, imperceptibly, a gush of juice rambles
from the patty. It is smooth and clear and carries
the weight of a million molecules, like the white water
in The River Wild, Meryl Streep
coasting to her doom, avoiding Kevin Bacon. Where
is the bacon?

It is sprinkled stingily on the salad nearby. Romaine, Arugula
the severed spine of frisée, radicchio's lilac gash,
Titanic crash of the iceberg: all of these castaways tossed
in suspense, buoyed on a Balsamic sea with fatty globules
floating to the surface as life rafts. A fork will not stick,
blue cheese crumbles. The mouth becomes
a needless destination.

But the burger, you can seize—
like a castle. Your fingers delapidating the bun's
towers, your thumbs undermining as teeth
finally sink into carnage and pull its vaguely
resistant corpse. Chew, you fool, chew, and
let the juice do the choosing.

Original, actual assignment: A photo of someone trying to decide between a plate with burger with fries and a plate of salad. JPEG is the preferred format; TIFF if no other format is available. Uncropped, untreated, original images. RGB. DPI should be between 150 and 300. Please note offer price is for all photos submitted. PAYS: $25.00 USD